Overnight Success in Sales

by Grant Cardone

"I've done over 700 interviews in the past 32 years. And every time I went out to sell door-to-door I was doing a presentation and I didn't get paid for most of them -- I've done over 11,000 unpaid speaking gigs and nearly 2,000 paid speaking gigs. Success doesn't come from being unmotivated. You must have a need for the marketplace to validate your contributions. The success that I have created in both my business and online was not the result of one thing I did right, but rather a relentless commitment to omnipresence. In this session will discuss how I went from no social following to being the #1 business expert to follow in the world, and how I went from ZERO sales social to literally millions… and how you can too."

Webinar Transcript

Grant: Hey, Grant Cardone here and thank you so much, Social Selling, for having me on this webcast, podcast, what do we call a cast and what does it matter? That's what I'm going to talk to you today about is how to get, create your success with Social Selling.

For the last six years, since 2009, I have used every medium possible to get my name known in the marketplace. I want to share that information with you, what some people are now calling Grant Cardone's Overnight Success.

Well, let me just tell you that my overnight success took 700 interviews, 70,000 tweets, 3,000 sales videos online, 11,000 sales articles and/or sales blogs. Believe it or not, over 150,000 social media posts across every medium and 900 live streams in just the last 90 days. That's right, 900 live streams in maybe 95 days, maybe 100 day max, okay?

Now I know all that seems like an exaggeration to you, not because I'm exaggerating but because you, my friends, are not doing enough, all right? So I want to share with you what we had to go through here to create the overnight success that I'm being both ridiculed and admired for at this time.

First of all, and by the way let me just say that if you don't know me, hey, I greatly apologize, greatly apologize, it's my fault. You'll be hearing more about that in a second. The first mistake you may be making with your social media presence in selling the social media is number one, not selling too much but the biggest mistake, I want to back everything up here, is if I don't know you, I can't flow you, okay? You understand?

Now a lot of people think that the mistake they're making is they're selling, pitching and promoting too much. Not true. The biggest mistake you can make in social media is that I don't know you at all. Obscurity Level 1 is what we call this. It's obscurity level number 1. Obscurity means I've never even heard of you, okay?

So if you've never heard of Grant Cardone, if you don't know me, can you buy my book? Could you hire me to speak at your company? Would you even know to go my Facebook page or look at YouTube or tweet me or follow me? Would you know any of that? No, of course you wouldn't.

Okay. It's for this one. So she can't, she can't walk in front of it. We all right? Would you pick that up? There you won't...you could, you know how much of this shot you can pervade into, right?. There you go man.

So look, if I don't know you, I'm not going to go to your Twitter handle, okay? Some of you got Twitter handles, Facebook names, YouTube channels. There is no way your name means anything to me. So even though you have a channel, by the time I find out your name, I go to look for you online and I can't find you.

So number one, obscurity level number one, biggest problem in social selling is "I don't know you." Remember this, if I don't know you, hey, I can't flow you.

Number two, biggest problem, obscurity level number 2, okay? Now look, I'm just going to smack you in the face today with the reality, the truth of this situation. Some of you out there have got some unbelievable products, unbelievable offers. You're great coaches. You have great books. You have great products. You have the lowest price. You have the best offering and then you don't follow me up.

You hit me once or twice and then you don't follow up, okay? Obscurity level number 2, if you target, okay, if your target forgets about you, you're in treason to yourself, your company and your family. Listen to me, obscurity level number 2, if your target audience forgets you, forgets your company, forgets your product, forgets you in the marketplace because you don't follow up. If you don't follow up enough you're in treason, in treason, a treasonous person should be shot in the head in public, made an example of. You're in treason to your family, yourself and your company.

Obscurity means this, "Look, I know you. I'm out of obscurity with you. I now know you." "Oh yeah, I know that guy Grant Cardone. I heard that name before." But then you don't repeat the message often enough is the mistake you can make at level 2.

"Wow Grant, well what's too much and what's enough?" Okay, most people are failing because they don't do enough. They're not even in the zip code neighborhood, county, state, not even on the country. Some people aren't even on the planet of enough.

If you think a couple of posts are going to do it, hey man, you're whacked in the head. There's no way a couple of posts are going to do it. I'll give you some numbers here in a second. Some of the monster numbers that you're competing with.

I'm freaking dominating social media and I don't even know WhatsApp can have a freaking photo dropped on it. I thought WhatsApp was for free people, okay? I just wanted something for free. Two hundred seventy-seven thousand tweets every 60 seconds, and you guys think I do too much. Are you kidding me, all right?

I can't even remember my own name I'm getting hit with so much stuff. So what are the first two problems? I don't know you. Number two, I don't know you. Obscurity level 1, never heard of you. Obscurity level number 2, I forgot your name because I'm getting banged with so much stuff, and look, I just did half the list. What about Vine users, Skype users, Yelp? What about Apple downloads? What about iTunes searches? What about podcast, webcast, TV shows, 800 TV channels just in one country? What about Pandora? Not to mention what, what's the other ones? Whatever they're called, okay?

How about all the Amazon reaches? What about the freaking, crazy whack out news? What about driving to work this morning and I saw wreck and that's all I'm talking about at the water cooler, you understand? I'm dealing with gossip, criticism, I'm dealing with celebrities grabbing at my name and making people forget about me because I don't bang over and over and over. How do you get a nail in a wall? You hit it over and over and over and that's what you need to do on social media.

Number three biggest mistake, oh, this is going to kill you, okay? I'm telling you, you're going to hate my guts when I give you this one. You have a favorite medium, okay? I was doing a presentation to a group of people the other day, about a thousand people there. Lady in there, "Hey, what is your favorite social medium?" I said, "You need to sit down because you don't understand social media."

If you're asking me what my favorite one is, you do not understand social media. If you have a favorite, you're confused. What is the favorite? The favorite is where your customer is. It doesn't matter if you use Snapchat or not. It doesn't matter if you use YouTube. It doesn't matter whether you like Facebook or don't. It doesn't matter what your demographic is.

People are on these mediums. I want to go to the medium that my customer will find me on. I don't need to like it. Look, between me and you, I hate them all. I hate Facebook. I like Twitter. I don't know why I like Twitter. I hated it in the beginning. YouTube, I never even look at YouTube. I beat it up like a little brother that I hate, okay? All right?

And Snapchat? I would never look at a 10-second video, just don't make any sense to me that it would disappear after that because I'm transparent. I don't know why people use Pinterest. Instagram, complete waste of time, man. If I want pictures, I just search on Google. You see what I'm saying? But it doesn't matter what I like. It doesn't matter.

I've got 50,000 people following me on Instagram. I've never looked at an Instagram in my life. You're feeling what I'm putting out? I'm just keeping it real with you. In the face, if you've got a social medium that is your favorite, you don't understand social media, okay?

Again, Social Selling, thanks for having me once. You might not ever have me back again and/or your audience is going to love this so much, they're going to be like, "Bring back the godfather of social media." Okay?

All right, number 4, you're not frequent enough. Look, my philosophy in my office is to beat the mediums up until somebody from Twitter calls me and says, "Enough. You are done. You cannot use Twitter anymore." That's what we're trying to do.

I actually had YouTube shut me down from some video. We posted video. They shut it down, said it involved illegal content, third-party content, which it didn't. It was just some hater, which you got to have. You've got to have you some haters, man. That's what social media is about. It's about pulling the haters out of the rafters and the closets, getting the voyeurs to come out, getting those trolls that never do anything all day along except sit on a sofa. I can just see the guy sitting on a sofa right now dropping Oreo cookies all over himself, watching me. Watching me make money because I'm using social media right. He is just sitting there piglet that he is, piglet troll.

Look, I'm going to beat on these social mediums until these trolls and haters are like, "Dude, I can't even keep up with the guy." I'm going to beat on every medium so hard that my competition says, "Dude, the guy is going crazy. He is so far in another league. He is on another planet." They don't even think about me being competition anymore. Do you understand?

You need to beat these mediums so frequently that somebody actually calls you from YouTube and says, "Enough." So we contacted YouTube. We contacted YouTube about this video they took down and I said, "Hey, let me tell you what I'm going to do, dude. Number one, I'm going to sue you for taking my video down, okay?"

"It had third party content..."

"I'm suing you for it. Number two, I'm putting it up again and I'm going to label this one, 'The Video That YouTube Took Down.'" The Video That YouTube Took Down video got more hits than the video that YouTube took down. Then they put the video back of The Video That YouTube Took Down. While that's happening, I'm posting it on Twitter. On Instagram, that I hate. I'm posting a little clip of it. I'm posting on Facebook. I hate everybody on Facebook. I don't even have friends on Facebook, okay?

See what I'm saying? I'm trying to make a point to you. Does it matter whether you like it or not? And are you using them enough? People told me in the beginning that I wasn't using these mediums enough. I'm like, what do you mean not using them enough? Nobody from Facebook called me and said I can't use them anymore.

When Facebook started throttling, okay, trying to get me to advertise with them, enforced advertising, what did I do? I wrote an article about it. I went to another medium and wrote articles, did videos on YouTube, went to Twitter and said, "Facebook is trying to choke a free man in a free country and it ain't going to happen to me. You know why? Because I'm never ever dependent upon one medium, number one, and number two, I'm going to beat these mediums. Beat them."

What's enough? Enough on each medium is when your friends start to delete you. Your target should be to get your friends, you know those, your friends and your family, your cousins, your uncles, your aunts. Those people that never buy anything from you. Your goal should be to get them to say, "I can't even. I don't even want to see another post." All right?

This is what I hear from my friends and family. "You're the only...my god, I had to just...oh my god, how do you do all that stuff?" "Have you deleted me yet?" "Oh yeah, I deleted you. I just couldn't take anymore." "Good. It's not for you anyway."

So you need to beat the medium up. Twitter is not going to call you. Facebook is not going to call you. YouTube is not going to stop you. Your friends and your family are good indicators. They're like, "Uh uh."

I've got employees that have blocked me. I know, I guarantee I've got employees here that have blocked me. They're like, "I can't even look at this information. I work for him eight hours. I don't want to watch him for another 18 hours."

So is that too much? You guys want to make money on social media? You want to get known on social media? Or you want to go back to advertising on TV and radio and billboards? I'd do those too if it worked. Not frequent enough. How often is often enough? Look, we post sometimes here every 30 seconds. I've got tweets going out twice-a-minute.

What's frequent enough? You need to look at what kind of numbers are happening right now, okay? Beat the medium until your friends quit you, that's what I say. You're like, "Oh man, I could never be Grant Cardone. I can't act like that. I can't act all arrogant and swaggy." Look, then I don't even know you exist. I don't know you exist. We're back to number one, biggest mistake is obscurity. Second biggest mistake is I forgot you, right?

All right, so this is what you're going to do here. I'm going to give you six tips. Six tips, okay? More than that would just overwhelm everybody. Six tips and I'm going to show you how I created my own...how we did it here.

To build and sell socially, number one, you have to promote like a celebrity. You've got to start operating like you're the expert celebrity. Like you've got to call the paparazzi, like Kanye says, "I called the paparazzi on myself." When I heard that song, I'm like, "What's that mean, man? Oh man, I can't...paparazzi is not following me." But I could actually create, I'm going to manufacture Grant Cardone the celebrity.

So we actually made a decision here five years ago, we're going to manufacture "Grant Cardone is a celebrity," and we're going to use every medium possible so the paparazzi does follow me, so that we do get photos. And if I have to create that by calling the paparazzi on myself, thank you Kanye, then I will. I've got great products. I've got a great company. I take care of people. If I'm not a celebrity...who is the bestselling books on planet earth right now? They all have TV shows. They're in the media. People are watching them. That's who sells books.

Number two, you need to identify all possible lines available to you, okay? Then three, you're going to build a message for each one of those lines. I'm going to show you how to do that here in a second. Build a message for each line. Four, jam content onto those lines until that line that's about this big becomes this wide with your name on it.

Number four, push content on each line every day. Number five, become omnipresent. And the last thing is use the 80-20 rule. I'm going to show you how to do that right now.

All right, I'm going to show you how to build out and how we built out, right here in Miami, our social media following. Boom, okay? Grant Cardone, caricature. All celebrities have caricatures. Not saying you need one but I want you to start with a photo, put it on the whiteboard, and I want you to label this "Manufacture Celebrity," okay?

That's long for FUPR, okay? Traditional PR. If you don't know what that means, call my office. I can explain it to you. So the first thing we did was identified the lines that we had available to us, okay? Line Facebook, line Twitter, line LinkedIn, awesome, awesome, awesome platform. By the way, would the messages on each three of these be different? Absolutely.

Google Plus. Why would I want Google Plus? Different reason than I want these. I don't want Google Plus because people are reading. I want Google Plus for a lot of other reasons that I can explain in detail and you can see how I use basically to protect my reputation online. What else do we have? Facebook.

I've got YouTube over here. My friends over at YouTube, I forget them. Most people don't even consider YouTube a social medium. Let me tell you something, I get more traffic from YouTube than any other single place. And when you create these, you start figuring out, "What am I going to drop on each of these lines?" Blogs, right?

Instagram. I'm not a fan of Instagram. My wife, Elena Cardone, loves her Instagram, loves it. I ignore watching it. I dump on it every day. All right, what else do I have? Facebook fan page. Facebook fan page, when that came out I made a big mistake in not thinking that I was going to be a celebrity in the beginning. So I got Facebook, like many of you did, maxed out my friends at 5,000 overnight. My friends don't buy my products. People I don't know buy my products.

So this is who we were going for here. Who does not know me, not who does know me. Let's see what else do I have here? I've got Snapchat. It comes out. I'm like, "Okay, let's use it." I don't know what it is. Eighty million millenials are using it, okay?

Oh, Meercat pops out. What's Meercat? Oh, I'm only the number one Meercater on planet earth. I'll never relinquish that goal. Periscope pops out. Periscope, I'm one of the top five Periscopers on planet earth. Blab. I know I'm not including everything. What else do I have, guys?

Grant: Okay, oh how about Facebook streams or mentions, okay? I was invited by Facebook in the first week that they launched to not just be...who was the bald-headed, the big ball player? All the big celebrities they were getting to do mentions, and your boy, Grant Cardone. Yeah, you think too much? If you don't know me, you can't buy from me. If you forget me, you won't buy from me, okay?

Now, the question is, this is just some of the mediums and you've got a favorite? You have a favorite social medium? Really? What's your favorite, okay? Because my customers around the world are on all of these, not one or two of these. Have I left anything out? Oh yes, I have. Webcast, how about Webcast? How about this? Oh, I'm sorry, iTunes.

Man: iTunes podcast.

Grant: Okay iTunes. Okay, how about this, podcast with other people, right? How about I do some collaboration with Gary Vee, okay?

Man: Jeffrey Gitomer.

Grant: Or how about my friend Jeffrey Gitomer? Or how about my friends over at T-mobile that I'm doing something with? How about I do something with the US army? It's only the biggest employer on planet earth. How about I do this? How about by the way that we actually get in control of our media by creating our own network?

If you go to mygctv.com, mygctv.com, that stands for GrantCardoneTV.com, we basically created a network so that when we produce content on any of these, we push back to here. Then the question you're going to have is this, right now you're butting up against the reality of your situation. Dude, I wasn't thinking about all this, right?

When I started doing this, I started being hated by social media experts. I'm not quite as hated by them now. I'm probably envied by them now. They said that I was using too many mediums, over-exposed, and too many messages, okay? Look, they were wrong and I was right, bottom line.

Donald Trump. Look, Donald Trump is 28% of the Republican vote right now because he knows how to use one medium extremely well, maybe Twitter and Facebook extremely well. He is not using the rest of them very well. But he knows how to use these two and he knows how to use TV extremely well. So some of you are ignoring traditional TV and radio because you have a Facebook page. This is where your clients are.

Now the question is this, do you have the energy? Who is going to do it? Nnumber two and three. What content would you drop on these lines, because the tweet that I drop is different than the Facebook post is different than the YouTube video is different than the blog I'm going to write or medium. Oh, I forgot a couple of other places I write. HubPost, Entrepreneur Magazine, Wells Fargo. Where else do I write? Oh, I'm sorry, GrantCardoneTV.com, gctv.com. They let me write for as much as I want.

Man: Forbes.

Grant: Forbes magazine, Business Insider, Follow Me. Okay, so let me go back over what I just showed you. I know you're probably thinking right now, "Dude, how do I have time for all that?" Look, if you don't have time to promote yourself, nobody is going to know you. Nobody is going to know you. Nobody is going to flow you.

If you start by promoting and then stop, people that know you now know you, you invested time and energy in them knowing you, are now going to forget you. Now you've got to figure out, "What content am I going to drop on each of these lines?" Now due to the length of time that we have here today on Social Selling, maybe these guys will ask me to come back and show you what we developed as content for each line. Because each line, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, each line really wants and has a different audience. What I say on LinkedIn is different than what I would say on Facebook by literally another planet.

So let me just recap here. Promote like a celebrity. What do celebrities do? You don't think these celebrities are not calling the paparazzi? "Hey, hey, let them know that we're going to be over at the Fountainbleau tonight." Oh, absolutely they're doing it, okay?

Number two, identify every line that you have. Three, build a message, which we didn't do here. Build a message for each of the lines that you have available. Push content every day. Every day you need to be pushing content. If you've got to get five or six people working with you, expand your company. If you're trying to save money, you're trying to do this all by yourself, you can never do this by yourself. If you're trying to save money to make money, you can't make money. This is the biggest problem I have with some of the experts in the space. They're telling other people to spend money on social media and they don't spend money on social media. Like this is a concerted effort here at our company to reach seven billion people. There's not even seven billion people on planet earth. I'm trying to reach more people than there are here. I'm trying to reach the dead, okay?

Number four, push content. Push content on every line every day. Number five, become omnipresent. Look up the word. It means to be everywhere all at the same time and now it's possible for the first time in your life.

And the last thing is use the 80-20 rule. The 80-20 rule is this. You drop content. Give, give, give 80% of the time. 20% of the time you sell. I don't mind selling. I don't mind selling hard. I don't mind pushing. I don't mind promoting a hard, hard product, okay? Promote like a celebrity. Think about Martha Stewart, Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Mark Cuban, Warren Buffet. These guys are online every day.

Look, to take your social selling to another level, to start getting the prices you deserve, the quantities you deserve, to get the attention, the notoriety, to get the celebrity that you deserve, you need to commit at a whole new level. Number two, become the celebrity expert in your space. Claim it as you, manufactured your celebrity. Use every line every day. Become omnipresent. Anything that is given the title of everywhere all at the same time is considered all powerful. And remember the 80-20 rule. Give, give, give and then promote like hell, all right?

Look, love me or hate me, now you know me, okay? This is Grant Cardone. Thank you so much. I want to thank the people at Social Selling for putting this together. Thank you for investing your time and energy today and hopefully you had an open mind. Hopefully you got some great takeaways. I want to also thank HireVue and SalesforLife, and I want to also thank all of you that already followed me and maybe came to Social Selling to watch us today. You guys that are fam...not fans, family of mine. My goal at my company is to create a network of like-minded entrepreneurs, go-getters, people that have freak and hustle, hustle in their heart, like saturating every cell in their body. They want to hustle, find a solution, do what's right. They've got so much hustle, they don't have time for hate. That's my mission.

If you liked this presentation, share it with your friends on whichever medium is your favorite, okay?